Kaine To Force Tough Choices On Mcdonnell

In the anxious days leading up to this Friday's rollout of an austere 2010-12 state budget, outgoing Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has been sending up warning flares:

"Everything is on the table," he's said repeatedly, when asked about possible tax increases and cuts. "People are going to see an awful lot in this budget they don't like."

Perhaps no one will like Kaine's budget plan less than the man who succeeds him in five weeks - Republican Bob McDonnell.

Democratic lawmakers, administration officials and others familiar with the details said that Kaine will balance the two-year spending plan and erase its anticipated $3.5 billion shortfall with priorities that run counter to the McDonnell agenda.

The Kaine fiscal swan song, in addition to further layoffs and cuts, is expected to include new revenue, perhaps generated by proposals to provoke McDonnell and other anti-tax Republicans to either accept Kaine's version, or take the hit for making the unkindest cuts themselves.

"It's going to be a bold stroke," a Kaine administration official said privately, without going into detail.

On Friday afternoon, Kaine responded starkly to four state Republican leaders and a GOP-leaning independent who had urged him not to propose a tax increase.

"Your letter conveys a failure to grasp the stark realities of the coming budget," Kaine wrote. "We are far beyond the stage of eliminating inefficiencies or making merely difficult cuts."

Kaine could weave his recommendations into the budget in such a way that unraveling them would force McDonnell to take politically risky steps.

"A more conservative McDonnell is likely to emerge in 2010 than the McDonnell who ran for governor in 2009," said Stephen J. Farnsworth, a political analyst at George Mason University.

While Farnsworth said he expects that in the anticipated budget brawl McDonnell will revert to philosophical form, it might neatly complement the mood of an electorate agitated over the economy and public spending.

McDonnell has pledged to oppose any tax increases in the budget that Kaine will announce this week to the General Assembly money committees.

Beyond serving as a template for spending and an omnibus for policy, the budget can be an exercise in political gamesmanship - a deliberate effort to flush out adversaries and gain favor with voters.

Kaine, who has already lopped spending by nearly $7 billion since 2007 because of the economic downturn, has said he is considering all options for balancing the budget.

That could include a recommendation to junk a sacred cow for Republicans: Nearly $1 billion a year in car-tax relief enacted in 1998 under the last GOP governor, Jim Gilmore.

McDonnell said he considers any assault on the car-tax rollback a de facto tax increase - a position underscored by Del. M. Kirkland Cox of Colonial Heights, ranking Republican on the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee.

"I do not see it going anywhere and that's why it's counterproductive to put it in the budget," Cox said.

But Democrats are giving Kaine wide berth, saying that even as a lame-duck governor, he's in the best position to fashion a budget that reflects the needs of the state and the realities of the economy. And that, Democrats said, might require what are euphemistically known as revenue enhancements.

But with the assembly divided - the House boasts a fortified Republican majority and Democrats narrowly control the Virginia Senate - the battle over spending could be brutal.